Comments on the Analysis and Recommendations on the WTC Memorial
Plan

The report submitted by Mr. Sciame is part and parcel of the uniformly
mistaken and disgraceful process by which the plans for restoration of
the World Trade Center site have been developed since the attacks of
2001.

Time and again we see the pattern:

Make a mistake.

Pay attention to only favorable comments,so as to pretend the
mistake is popular.

Promise never to correct the mistake,because it is "progress".

Make new mistakes that compound the old one.

Thus we have this effort at tinkering with the Reflecting Absence
plan,while committing not to revisit its flaws,the flaws in the memorial
design competition that required those flaws,the flaws in the Master Plan
that required those flaws,or the basic mistaken priorities that
mandated only bad Master Plan submissions be considered.

The immediate impetus to this reevaluation,which is being undertaken with
the highest priority being given to preventing the next Governor from
having time to undo Governor Pataki's mistakes,is the revelation of the
spiralling costs of Reflecting Absence.

We were initially told there would be public hearings,but official concern
that the runaway train that is the appalling official design process might
be brought under control rather than assured of generating the hideous
urban blight that it promises has led to there only being a tiny comment
window.

So Mr. Sciame is left to metaphorically put lipstick on a warthog and
pretend the result is attractive.He makes clear,however,in his excerpts
from the prior documents and in his later discussions,that the mistakes
that officialdom has demanded will be made even if more cheaply.

Reflecting Absence is committed to perpetuating and highlighting
the absence of the Twin Towers,and this is,no matter what may be vainly
claimed by anyone,a reprehensible empowerment of the authors of the mass
murder of September 11th 2001 and the very antithesis of honor to those
whom they slaughtered.Few acts of surrender in the history of Western
civilization have been as outrageous as the promise by Governor Pataki
that the Twin Tower footprints would be kept as empty of the purposes
for which the victims lived and died as commanded by Osama bin Laden.

To ask future generations of Americans to see,and enable future
generations of their enemies to celebrate,the success of terrorism
in removing great icons of America from where they stood is beyond
reprehensible.How many future attacks may be inspired by those
footprints being left as gaping wounds on New York's cityscape?

What is built on this site must before all else emphasize the strength
of our recovery above the severity of our wounds,to show that the city,
the nation,and the free world prevailed despite the horrible slaughter
of that infamous day.

Though we are told "the memorial must come first",in seeking to honor
those who died in the attacks rather than creating an embodiment of their
killers' triumph,any memorial that "comes first",therefore fails.

The official insistence that the "memorial quadrant" be divided from
the rest of the site by active streets nullifies the pretense that the
"Freedom Tower" and other commercial structures show "resilience"...
no one is fooled by the claim that resilience is shown by the construction
of smaller buildings,not even on the same block,that cower away from the
holes in fear...what is built on one side of a street in no way expresses
rebuilding of something that was destroyed on the other side of the
street.

In recasting the memorial in a more appropriate as well as more affordable
form,Mr. Sciame does not raise,undoubtedly because he was forbidden to
raise,the possibilities of removing the streets or reducing the surface
space consumed by the memorial,that the World Trade Center site be
restored to the integrity violated by the terrorists.

Nor does he offer any complaint,no doubt because he was forbidden to
complain,that in randomly shuffling the names of the actual victims of
the attack at the site with those of Pentagon and Shanksville victims who
may never have visited Manhattan in their lives it violates the integrity
and sanctity of all three sites by treating the fact of where
someone died as nothing special.In contrast those whose lives were taken
by enemies of the Union on July 3rd 1863 who died at Gettysburg are
honored at Gettysburg,and those who died at Vicksburg are honored at
Vicksburg...not randomly shuffled at one of the places without regard to
where they died.Only in muted neutrality does he mention that the issue
of name format remains open.

Continuing on this misguided course honors no one worthy
of honor but rather disgraces the entire free world and creates a
trophy for the triumph of terror.No memorial that does not willingly
stand in the shadow of undiminished new Towers can properly exalt
those killed in an effort to destroy the Towers.

We need an appropriate memorial...and it is in our demonstrating
the power of mass murderers to diminish New York and America,not
in our demonstrating the strength of our resolve to rebuild structures
of the same purpose and greater size and strength than those destroyed
by the murderers of thousands,that "less is more".

The victims of September 11th 2001 will never be forgotten,but we must
honor them in the historic and urban context of new generations carrying
on in their footsteps,not their killers having created a dead space amid
our lives forever.

Let the Tower footprints be shared with new Towers...let the spirits of
the dead see that we were not driven away by their enemies as soldiers
fleeing a battlefield never to fight for it again.